Its the Economy : Reich

 It’s the economy, stupid. Thus spoke my friend James Carville, one of Bill Clinton’s campaign managers, in 1992. He was correct then and he’s been right ever since. 

Today, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added 353,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate remains at 3.7 percent. The BLS also revised upward the two prior months, bringing the average monthly job gain in 2023 to 255,000. 

Even manufacturing, which has been in the doldrums, added 23,000 positions. 

Average hourly earnings grew 0.6 percent from December.

Few economists expected job gains to remain this strong when high interest rates were needed to bring down inflation.

But inflation is way down. Larry Summers (with whom I worked in the Clinton administration) predicted that the Fed would have to cause excessive joblessness to tame inflation (Summers also called the 2021 American Rescue Plan the “least responsible” fiscal policy in 40 years). 

He was wrong. Jobs growth continues to roar. Economic growth is good. Wages are moving in the right direction. 

Yet despite all the good news, 71 percent of Republicans say the economy is getting worse, and Donald Trump is once again claiming that the unemployment numbers are fake. 

Trump and Republicans are focusing on the only real remaining economic problem: Although inflation is down, prices haven’t come down. Why not? Because of corporate pricing power. 

Consider Pepsi. In 2021, PepsiCo, which makes all sorts of drinks and snacks, announced it was forced to raise prices due to “higher costs.”Forced? Really? The company reported $11 billion in profit that year. 

In 2023 PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.

If Pepsi had lots of competitors, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which – surprise, surprise - announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi, and also kept its prices high in 2023. 

With just one or a few competitors, it’s easy for giant corporations to coordinate price increases and prevent price cuts, to keep their profits up while shafting consumers. 

The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging. 

Pepsi and Coca-Cola dominate the soft drink market. They own most of the brands that appear to be competitors. 

This corporate pricing power isn’t just happening with Coke and Pepsi. Take meat products. At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30% more for beef, pork, and poultry products than they were in 2020. 

Why? Just four companies now control processing of 80 percent of beef, nearly 70 percent of pork, and almost 60 percent of poultry. So of course, it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases and prevent price cuts. 

In 75 percent of U.S. industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

Which is why the Biden administration is taking on this monopolization with the most aggressive use of antitrust laws in half a century. 

It’s taken action against alleged price fixing in the meat industry. 

It’s also suing Amazon for using its dominance to artificially jack up prices — one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.

It successfully sued to block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, which would have made consolidation in the airline industry even worse.

But given how concentrated American industry has become, there’s still a long way to go. 

Inflation is down. But many people don’t feel it because prices are still high, and in some cases are still rising because of continued price gouging. That’s given Trump and his Republican lapdogs an excuse to tell Americans that the economy remains bad. 

The truth is, the economy is remarkably good, but too many big corporations have too much power over prices. The answer is to break them up — but I don’t expect Trump and the Republicans to say this. Do you?

Robert Reich.

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 2023.

 

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

by Peter Dreier.

"50 Years After the March on Washington, What Would MLK March For Today?" Washington Post, August 22, 2013.   The March on Washington, where King delivered his great "I Have a Dream" speech, took place on August 28, 1963.  I wrote this article in 2013 to celebrate the march's 50th anniversary.  If he were alive today, King would be fighting for the same causes - peace, women's reproductive health, affordable housing, desegregation, immigrant rights, gun control, and others.  

 Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins, "We Still Have a Dream," Sun-Sentinel, August 27, 2023   Black Americans have endured the unendurable for too long. Sixty years after the famed March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech, African Americans are on a path where it will take 500 more years to reach economic equality.  Our country has taken significant steps towards racial equity since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. But growing income and wealth inequality over the last four decades has supercharged historic racial wealth disparities, slowing and even reversing some of those gains. Sixty years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth divide is a policy failure. But just as federal policy helped create the racial wealth gap, it can also help close it. The op-ed column by Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins is a summary of their report, "Still A Dream: Black Economic Inequality 60 Years After the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," which looks in detail at the state of that racial and wealth divide and recommends policy reforms that would substantially narrow it within one to two generations.

Peter Dreier. 2023.

 

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/march-on-washington-for-jobs-and-freedom-2021

 

 

Poor People's Campaign - Sacramento

Vince Villegas - Progressive Alliance

by Duane Campbell

Hundreds of tenants, low-wage workers, clergy, union members and community activists descended upon the California state capitol today in a show of collective power to demand that state lawmakers take action to address the state’s homelessness crisis and to combat the systemic racism and poverty in our communities.

Working families traveled from San Diego, Los Angeles, Salinas, and the Bay Area to join in this fifth successive week of nonviolent direct action. 

Speakers and participants included union workers protesting the attack on workers rights and their unions.  Anti-worker attacks – like Janus V AFSCME -  would create so called ‘Right to Work’ status for government workers in California and around the nation.  

DSA Members at PPC 

“ The greedy rich and the corporations backing Janus are coming after us because they know about our power in numbers, and they know what we can accomplish when we stand together,” said David Dunbar a SEIU Local 721 member from Los Angeles. 

As the rally concluded, hundreds entered the capitol building to take their message directly to the lawmakers and to bear witness to their crisis when communities are torn apart by homelessness, poverty wages, systemic racism, and corporate greed. 

Socialists and Immigration

Dr. Duane E. Campbell,  April 19, 2017

In spite of the economic boon for the wealthy, working people in the U.S. have yet to receive a significant improvement in their standard of living for over 30 years.  At the same time, democratic forces are once again confronted with anti immigrant campaigns- this time fostered and promoted by a President of the U.S.

As socialists, we stand with and among the US working class in opposition to the rule of the transnational corporations and their exploitation of the economy and their despoliation of our lives, our society and our environment.

We are currently experiencing a major restructuring of the global economy directed by the transnational corporations to produce profits for their corporate owners.  The impoverishment of the vast majority of people in pursuit of profits for a small minority has pushed millions to migrant in search of food, jobs, and security.  Global capitalism produces global migration.  Along with wars NAFTA  and other “Free Trade” deals each produce a new waves of migration.

Socialists support the rights of working people to organize, to form unions, and to protect their rights and to advance their interests. Unions have always been an important part of how socialists seek to make our economic justice principles come alive.  Working people- gathered together and exploited in the capitalist workplace-are well positioned to fight their common exploitation.

Current immigration laws and practices, imposed upon us all by the corporations and their control of our government, often prevent working class unity by dividing workers against each other and  by creating categories of workers with few rights to organize and  thus to protect  their own interests.

The  neoliberal capitalist economic system now being created by the relentless merging of the world's  markets also  impoverishes the majority of U.S. workers.  The average U.S. worker has experienced a decline in their real wages since 1979.  Quality industrial jobs have moved to low wage, anti union areas in the U.S. and to Mexico, China, Singapore, Vietnam,  India and other nations. At present the U.S. has no significant controls on capital flight. Indeed, the US  government subsidizes some corporations to move jobs to Honduras, El Salvador,  and  the Caribbean.

Trump Lies About Immigrants

Journalist Jorge Ramos

President Trump has made up three tall tales to criminalize, criticize and reject immigrants in the United States. These stories are full of lies, but he’s repeated them so often that many Americans have started to believe them.

So let’s refute all three, one by one.

1. Undocumented immigrants are criminals.

This is Trump’s core story. When he launched his presidential bid in June 2015, he famously said that undocumented immigrants from Mexico are “bringing drugs; they’re bringing crime; they’re rapists.” And during his first speech before Congress recently, he again likened immigrants to “gang members, drug dealers and criminals.”

Here’s the truth about undocumented immigrants in the U.S.: A huge majority, 97% in fact, are good people. That number comes from a Migration Policy Institute study, which found that less than 3% of undocumented immigrants have committed a felony. It also found that American-born residents are twice as likely to commit a felony as immigrants are.

Crime statistics also demonstrate a correlation between having more undocumented immigrants and lower crime rates at the national level. Between 1990 and 2013, the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. tripled, from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. During that time, violent crime in America dropped by 48%, according to data from the FBI. Despite these facts, Trump insists on vilifying immigrants, and continues to push his “bad hombres” myth.

2. Immigrants are costly for the United States.

Another lie — and one that’s easy to refute by doing the math. Yes, it’s true that undocumented immigrants benefit from some social services and that their children get free public education all the way through high school. That costs money — but immigrants also contribute by paying taxes and creating jobs. The greatest irony is that undocumented workers also contribute part of their earnings to Social Security and Medicare, services from which they will never benefit.

In fact, immigrants contribute more than $2 billion to the economy every year, and produced some $54 billion dollars in net gain from 1994 through 2013, according to a study by the National Academy of Sciences. Trump blames immigrants for being a burden on the country, but they give back much more than they take.

Myths About Immigration

MYTH: "Immigrants take our jobs"

The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. Immigrants create new jobs by forming new businesses, buying homes, spending their incomes on American goods and services, paying taxes and raising the productivity of U.S. businesses.¹ In fact, between 1990 and 2004, roughly 9 out of 10 native-born workers with at least a high school diploma experienced wage gains because of increased immigration.

A legal flow of immigrants based on workforce demand strengthens the U.S. economy by keeping productivity high and countering negative impacts as the U.S. aging population swells. Of the twenty occupations that will see the largest growth in the next seven years, twelve of them only require on-the-job-training--including jobs in SEIU's core industries like home care, cleaning/janitorial services, child care, and hospitality services.³ But as native-born workers seek higher education and move up the occupational ladder, the number of native-born workers seeking employment in these industries has shrunk.

The problem with today's economy is not immigrants; the problem is our broken immigration laws that allow big business to exploit workers who lack legal status, driving down wages for all workers. If every immigrant were required to get into the system, pay their dues, and become U.S. citizens, we could block big business' upper hand, eliminate the two-tiered workforce, and build a united labor movement that raises wages and living standards for all workers.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has created some information cards concerning some of the most popular myths about immigration.  For example, the myth that Immigrants take our jobs.

The cards and information are here. http://www.seiu.org/cards/the-8-worst-myths-about-immigration

Teachers Still Not Returned to Work

Teachers still not returned to work

Drilling down, Elise Gould of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute notes: "public education jobs are still 236,000 less than they were seven years ago. The number of teachers rose by 41,700 over the last year. While this is clearly a positive sign, adding in the number of public education jobs that should have been created just to keep up with enrollment, we are currently experiencing a 410,000 job shortfall in public education. Short sighted austerity measures have a measurable impact, hitting children in today's classrooms." http://bit.ly/1L8FV2R

Except perhaps in California where districts are giving jobs to non credentialed teachers.  The following is a repost.

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil.

by Duane Campbell. Prof. Emeritus.  Bilingual/Multicultural Education. CSU-S. 

In 2015 after the Great Recession  a new state budgets sent large amounts of funds to k-12 schools and the funds of the Local Control and  Accountability Plan  were targeted to low income schools.  This increased funding will lead to a dramatic need for new teachers.  Sacramento City Unified plans to hire 100 new teachers, and many other local urban districts will do the same.  This faculty growth will continue for from 3-5 years.

But credentialed teachers from the Latino community and several Asian communities will not be available to hire because the Sac State pipeline for minority teachers  has been broken.  A new generation of mostly Anglo teachers will be hired which will continue the past failure to integrate the teaching profession in this region. Ending the pipeline will shape the nature of the local teaching profession for decades. Latino students make up 37 % of Sac City Unified students, Asians 17.4 %, African Americans 17.7 %, and White students 18.8 %. Latino families now make up over 37 % of California residents and Latino descent children now make up over 50% of public school students.

   The Bilingual Multicultural Education Department at Sac State was  set up as  a structure so that the university, CSU-Sacramento, could  serve the community by preparing and advancing hundreds of Chicano and Asian teachers each year.  Unfortunately, others shut down this vehicle. Between 1994 -2006, Latino descent students were about 35% of the total teacher preparation students each year ( 60 -90 students per semester).  After the termination of the department in 2010, Latino descent students were less than 10% of the total students in teacher preparation at Sac State (about 7 students).  This decline was a direct consequence of eliminating the department. 

This is a bad deal for you and I !

by Duane Campbell

The omnibus budget deal being debated in Congress passed on Sat. evening  includes a continuation of the budget cuts known as the sequester. 

Josh Silver has noted 5 major problems with the deal. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/omnibus-budget-deal-2014-5-worst-things_b_6307852.html

And Senator Elizabeth Warren has revealed the Wall Street subversion in this bill and is making a brave stand against the deal.
http://sacramentopa.blogspot.com/2014/12/sen-warren-calls-on-house-to-strike.html

It is important to understand our current economic situation to understand the  conflict in Congress  and our economic future.

First, know that Wall Street has recovered, but main street has not.

Middle-class wages are stagnant. Unemployment is stalled at record levels. College education is leading to debt servitude and job insecurity. Millions of unemployed Americans have essentially been abandoned by their government.  Poverty is soaring.

 Bankers break the law with impunity, are bailed out, and go on breaking the law, richer than they were before. Only a handful of people have gone to jail, none of the really big operators. Now, more than 6 years after the crisis began,  no senior officials of the corporations that looted our economy have been held accountable.  

More students, fewer teachers- it is called austerity

The Teacher Gap: More Students and Fewer Teachers

http://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-gap-students-teachers/

Portside Date: 

October 25, 2013

Author: 

Heidi Shierholz

Date of Source: 

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Economic Policy Institute

Over the last five years, government employment has dropped by 657,000 as a result of the Great Recession’s effects on federal, state, and local budgets. With kids getting settled back in the classroom this fall, it’s worth considering how much of that drop has hit public K–12 schools.
Of the decline in public-sector employment in the last five years, around 40 percent (258,000) is in local government education, which largely consists of jobs in public K–12 education (the majority of which are teachers, but also included are teacher aides, guidance counselors, and administrators, among others). Over the same period, public K–12 enrollment increased by 1.6 percent. Just to keep up with this growth in the student population, employment in local public education should have grown at roughly the same rate, which would have meant adding 132,000 jobs. Putting these numbers together (i.e., what was lost plus what should have been added to keep up with the expanding student population) means that the total jobs gap in local public education as a result of the Great Recession and its aftermath is around 389,000 jobs, as shown in the figure below.

300,000 Teacher Jobs lost

The 300,000 teacher gap

In September, public-sector employment increased by 10,000.  However, over the last four years, it has declined by 572,000.  With kids heading back to the classroom this fall, it’s worth considering how much of that drop has hit public schools. Around 40 percent of the decline in public sector employment over the last four years was in local government education, which is largely jobs in public K-12 education (the majority of which are teachers, but also teacher aides, librarians, guidance counselors, administrators, support staff, etc.). Furthermore, public K-12 enrollment increased by 0.8 percent over this period (using the enrollment growth rates found in Table 1 here). Just to keep up with this growth in the student population, employment in local public education should have grown at roughly the same rate, which would have meant adding around 62,000 jobs. As the figure shows, adding what was lost to what should have been added to keep up with the expanding student population, the total jobs gap in local public education as a result of the Great Recession and its aftermath is over 300,000.  For more on the teacher gap, see this post.
From Economic Policy Institute

Outsourcing jobs

 “On the last day on the job Kevin Flanagan, after clearing out a few personal effects and putting them in boxes in the back of his Ford Ranger, left the building where he’d worked for seven years.  He settled into the front seat of his pickup truck on the lower level of the company garage, placed a twelve-gauge Remington Shotgun to his head, and pulled the trigger.

He was forty-one years old.  He was a computer programmer.  He’d been a programmer his entire working life. “ p.99.

From.  The Betrayal of the American Dream.  Donald Bartlett and James Steele. 2012.

I encourage you to read their piece on outsourcing or offshoring and their excellent chapter on Apple computers moves. 

President Obama makes economic sense

Osawatamie, Kansas. Dec.6,2011.

Protecting Teachers jobs

President Calls for Billions to Save Educator Jobs and Modernize Schools

President Obama's American Jobs Act calls for $60 billion to save teacher jobs and modernize the nation's schools as part of his $447 billion plan to boost the lagging economy and reduce the stagnant unemployment rate. But despite the president's assertion that every component of his plan has a history of bipartisan support and won't add to the deficit, such measures face an uphill battle in a divided Congress where many Republicans are skeptical that more spending will improve the economy and create jobs.
The American Jobs Act includes $30 billion to prevent up to 280,000 teacher layoffs by supporting state and local efforts to retain, rehire, and hire early childhood, elementary, and secondary educators. The funds can be used for not only teachers, but also guidance counselors, classroom assistants, afterschool personnel, tutors, and literacy and math coaches. The hope is that in addition to saving educator jobs, such efforts will address the ballooning class sizes, shortened school days, and reduction of afterschool activities that many districts are facing this school year as a result of state budget shortfalls.
The plan proposes an additional $30 billion to modernize at least 35,000 public schools?$25 billion for K-12 schools and $5 billion for community colleges. The money can't be spent on new school construction, but it can be used on a range of emergency repair and renovation projects, greening and energy efficiency upgrades, asbestos abatement and removal, and modernization efforts to build new science and computer labs and upgrade school technology. Local districts would also be able to use the funds to help schools become centers of the community?from improving outdoor learning and play areas to upgrading shared spaces for adult vocational and job development centers.
 From: ASCD. Education Advocates.

Obama Jobs speech- $60 billion for schools.

 America's two largest teachers unions, which have often clashed with the Obama administration on education policies, praised the president for including $60 billion in relief for cash-strapped school districts in his jobs packageannounced Thursday evening.

"We have for months been talking about jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The Huffington Post. "We know that there needs to be a lifeline because the economy has not grown the way it should, and that is what this plan is about. It's about putting people back to work, growing the economy, making sure how families feel stabilized."

The speech follows a year of widespread teacher layoffs and education cuts that sparked concerns about sacrificing educational quality for short-term financial stability. The drying up of stimulus funds worsened the blow.

"You see, people taking furlough days, you see people taking modest raises or pay cuts, you see digging deeper in their pockets, you see higher class sizes, you see effects for families teachers and kids," Weingarten said.

Though Obama did not report a price tag for the plan, media outlets cited White House officials as saying it would cost $450 billion. The plan would set aside $60 billion for the repair of 35,000 schools and teachers' jobs.

Sen. Sanders Responds to Obama Jobs Plan

Obama’s Speech, His Banks, Our Jobs

By Nomi Prins

Before tomorrow's 2012 pre-election speech in which President Obama's vocal elocution will be earnest, and results - to put it mildly - tepid, about how he could create jobs dammit, if only the Republicans would behave, it's interesting to note who's supporting Obama keep his job.
A cursory look at the early stages of his campaign fundraising reveals that the same group of people that benefitted from policies (bi-partisan) that lavished them with cheap money, secret loans, debt guarantees and other forms of perks not available to the average citizen, are backing him for President. Big Time.
And whereas it's true, Obama's most recent poll numbers look as abysmal as any President (save FDR who he will never, ever be) facing a depressed economy and a near double-digit 'official' unemployment rate (worse if you get beneath its massaged surface), this isn't effecting his most important support, the financial kind. To date, Obama's Presidential bid dosh comes largely from - wait for it - the financial sector.
Yes, the same sector that screwed the country over, and that, despite some unpleasant lawsuits they will likely settle,  remains as powerful, unrepentant, unaccountable, selfish and Main-Street-destabilizing as before Obama took office. No wonder he's been able to keep Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner by his side - someone has to allay Wall Street concerns that true retribution or meaningful regulatory repercussion will befall them.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. -Bernie Sanders

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, - Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders is not running for president. Though he has expressed frustration with the direction of the 2012 campaign—going so far as to suggest that President Obama could use a primary challenge—Sanders will seek another term in the Senate next year.

But while he is not running for the presidency, Sanders is delivering the sort of speeches—and outlining the sort of agenda—that could animate the stale and lifeless 2012 campaign.

Indeed, the Vermont senator is making more fiscal and economic sense than anyone who is running—for either of the major party nominations in 2012.

“While everyone understands that we have got to reduce the deficit, the number-one challenge America faces right now is a jobs crisis,” the independent senator declared, while decrying the fact that more than 16 percent of American workers (25 million American) are either unemployed or underemployed.

The U.S. remains in the Great Recession

The U.S. and California are in a recession- a long recession.   Some communities are in a Depression.  Poorly informed  or uniformed writers and talking heads in the media contest- we can not decide if we are entering a new recession.  They arrive at this strange question because they are looking at profits and corporations.

For working people the Great Recession continues.  It is the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

In July the unemployment rate for persons who did not graduate from  high school was %15. For high school graduates it was 9.3%.  For persons with a Bachelor’s degree or higher it was 4.3.

In July   unemployment in the Black community stood at 15.9 %.  For the nation as a whole, unemployment was virtually unchanged at 9.1% in the month of July. Among whites, unemployment was 8.1%; among Latinos, unemployment was 11.3 %.

What are the consequences?  See the above  video by National Nurses United.  


We must fight back.

What everyone should know about the debt "crisis"?

Mark Weisbrot Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil), August 3, 2011 Nieman Watchdog, August 4, 2011 Since the U.S. “Debt Crisis” has been a big international story for the last few weeks, it is worth clarifying what is real and what is not. First, the U.S. government does not have a “debt crisis.” The U.S. government is paying net interest of just 1.4 percent of GDP on its public debt – this is not much by any historical or international comparison. The relatively large annual deficit at present (9.3 percent of GDP) is overwhelmingly the result of the recession and weak recovery. The long-term deficit projections are driven by health care costs in the private sector. These spill over into public spending because the U.S. government pays for almost half of health care spending, at a rate that is twice as high as other developed countries – and rising fast. There was never any chance that the U.S. would actually default on its debt. The whole “crisis” was manufactured from the beginning, with Republicans in the House of Representatives using a technicality to win unpopular spending cuts that they could not win at the ballot box. It worked: They got an agreement that promises large spending cuts without any tax increases on America’s rich or super-rich, who have vastly increased their share of the national income over the past three decades. The right won because President Obama chose to collaborate with them, also seeking to take advantage of the manufactured “crisis” to implement cuts that offended and hurt the people who voted for him. Of course he also wanted to increase taxes on the rich, but because he had accepted the legitimacy of the Republicans’ extortion, he lost that too.